Forum:Idea For Cleaning Up Strategy Pages and Decks
I just wanted to get feedback on this. I apologize for the "tl;dr" nature of this post, so before detailing it I will give a little "tl;dr" summary: I've been updating Raid pages where the decks are posted and attempting to streamline them into two core sections: "warbond" and "non-warbond", as well as expand the test results table to have more information. The best submitted deck for each gets one of the two templates, the rest go in the respective tables. I'm also trying to move us away from manual decks and simply using the "manual" strategy for simply describing tactical strategies and let people create their own decks based on that (perhaps post and discuss them on the talk pages). The exception, of course, being Achievements or other areas where specific manual decks are required. The entire goal is to shorten the pages and make it very easy and quick for people to visit and grab the info they are looking for and also very easy for contributors to update. I thought it might be good to design a template for this if it is a popular idea, but I'm not sure myself how that might work given the current complex and varied nature of the test result tables with regards to rowspans and such... Details: *Some may notice that I've recently taken the initiative with some of the Raid pages to streamline the strategy sections where decks are suggested and simulated test results are displayed. *I originally created the table for displaying simulated test results to include the details of the simulator and tester to give more background to the reported win rate, because I felt people posting a simple "this deck wins 99% of the time" was way too open to debate. *Since then, people (including myself) started posting additional decks where only one or a few cards were changed, providing a different result. In some cases the goal was to provide a deck with cards that were easier to obtain, in other cases the goal was to improve the win rate. *The Evaluate Decks simulator has had a great deal of work done on it, with many bug fixes and enhancements, making it a very powerful tool. The developer, NETRAT, is active on the Kong forums responding to feedback from all the people using it and (if necessary), updating his program. *To reduce the length of pages, I started taking out the decks that were added as templates and adding them to the test results table, with appropriate link and credit to the author, then sorting the table by win rate. This made the page much more readable for players who frequent the pages looking to see what the best decks are. *Even more recently, I took it a step further and started splitting these deck tables into two: One for decks that include "warbond-only" cards and one for decks that exclude "warbond-only" cards, which I believe to be the two core groups of players (paying players and free players). *To make this work, I changed the "Variations" column to be called "Decks". Contributed decks would be pasted in there using the format provided by the Evaluate Decks program (when you test decks, it allows you to copy and paste the deck list in quite a nice, clean, formatted way). I would add author credit if applicable and the test results, then remove the templated deck in keeping with the goal of streamlining the page. I would sort the rows by win rate. *Along with Hakdo, I noticed that in some cases we were getting plenty of decks in both lines, so it seemed like a good idea to use the current win rates as the basis for a "minimum win rate" required to post an additional deck. The table captions and the headers for deck pages had notes to this affect added. *For "Manual" sections, it is a bit more tricky. There is no "real" way to test a manual deck, although the latest release of Evaluate Decks now has an option to "play cards in order", which I believe means that the program still randomizes the deck just like in the game, but will play the cards in the order you set in the deck as much as possible, depending on (of course) what you get in your hand each turn. This works very well for testing decks where the only manual strategy is "play the deck in order". I've posted test results in this manner and modified the table caption to say "...parametrized Auto mode battles" instead of just "...Auto mode battles" and also bulleted the parameters cell text, adding a new list item for "Cards played in order" to show that this option was checked in the simulator. Where this option does not work, is when the manual strategy is more complex, such as "use mend wounds when needed" or "play X card when enemy plays Y". Slivicon 19:15, November 20, 2011 (UTC) Base idea is good. {C}Probably the only thing we should be careful about is storing only high-end decks and nothing else. Stuff like 6 Lance Raiders or 4 Razors makes me sigh. Easymode 08:23, November 21, 2011 (UTC) *If this is the worry, then I think I have to propose an additional auto-tier for Bond-less decks, where Level rewards and Faction rewards (and maybe Raid rewards too) are excluded. Chances are some cases will see significantly lower win rates, though. But we'll see. Hakdo 13:21, November 21, 2011 (UTC) Templatizing the test table is... something a little tricky. But I think I can adopt the , and framework. That is, a template for beginning of a sim results table, another for end of the table, a third for individual row. Supporting rowspan and colspan of individual tables, however, will be the bigger trick here. Hakdo 13:21, November 21, 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the feedback. For the card tiers, the Warbond-Only Included and Warbond-Only excluded is a good start. However, like you both mentioned, there may need to be a third tier. I don't think it will be possible to have such a tier exclude all Level, Faction and Raid rewards and still provide a worthwhile deck. However, it may be possible to put limits on them and state them outright. For example, no Raid Rewards higher than n Honor, no Level rewards higher than Level n, no Faction Rewards higher than Faction Level n...Like Hakdo says, though, it can be attempted. Perhaps if we are to incorporate such a third tier, we set a base win rate, something like 80%? If it is possible to design a deck without those cards that can have a win rate of at least 80%, it might be viable for some players. I think I will post to Kongregate to see if Inorix is around and able to provide some statistics on the player population that might help us decide... Slivicon 23:55, November 21, 2011 (UTC) Inorix posted a reply to my post on Kongregate. *Inorix only has data on players who have scored at least once during a faction war. *There are 47503 such players with an average level of 17. *Factions launching at least 1 attack during the 20th of November have an average level of 3.78 (while all existing factions have an average level of 1.62). Slivicon 22:20, November 26, 2011 (UTC)